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Homestar Runner Wooky talk:Protection policy
I would say that the first two "good reasons" are not good at all. Protecting the main page is likely to be off-putting to new users. The first page they see should be fully editable. Wikicities:Protection says that page protection is for highly vandalised pages, and there hasn't been enough here yet for me to think there is a need to start locking things down already, especially not the Main Page (see Wikicities:Help:Main Page). User pages are a similar case. For a start (as you have seen) it can only really be done for admins, and that helps set admins apart and above other users. That's a bad habit to get into. Admins should be users with extra buttons to help, not "THE BOSSES". It's better to develop a culture of "ask before making major changes to a user page" and an open policy that allows minor changes. It's a wiki after all, it's supposed to be editable by all :) -- sannse (talk) 14:13, 26 February 2006 (UTC) :About protecting user pages you are absolutely right. I was among the first admins to protect my user page, although part of the reason was that at the time there was still a lot of vandalism going on and the measure had been necessary. However most (not all) admins in other wikis don't protect their user pages either. Things have calmed down (for the most) and there may not be a need to protect our user pages. I have unprotected mine (except for moves) but there really isn't much there to protect. As for the main page, most other wikis that I know protect the main page maily to keep their formatting and look and feel. The contents of the different sections, however are still editable (like our news section). Perhaps at the very least doing the same for the "links" section would be a good idea. However, the Main page being such a high profile page, even for a small wiki like this, would make it a prime target for vandals. So, personally, I like the main page protected. However a link to a sandbox-type introduction might help new users get acquanted. I'm not sure. --Stux 17:38, 26 February 2006 (UTC) ::A lot of wikis do protect their main page, especially the big ones like Wikipedia, but here at Wikicities we are trying to encourage people to be more open and not protect the main page unless there is a problem. One of my jobs is finding protected main pages and asking for them to be unprotected (or doing it myself in some cases). Templates are a good way of partial protection, but they are very confusing for newbies, who are unlikely to be able to find the right page to edit. It's worth unprotecting and seeing what sort of reaction you have. You'll get some test edits, which are easily reverted, but you may end up with a much better front page! Thanks to all who have unprotected their user pages, they do have to be protected if there is an attack going on, but this is much better for a normal day. And I like the guest books - nice idea :) -- sannse (talk) 20:06, 26 February 2006 (UTC) :::Well Sannse, while the wiki is supposed to be editable by all, the Main Page is fine with sysops doing it by themselves. Honestly, the posts should be more formal, telling people please work on this or that, or at least that's what I think. It just seems safer with only sysops doing it. 00:43, 27 February 2006 (UTC) ::::Remember your contributors are volunteers, here for the fun of it, so be careful of being too formal on what exact jobs people should do. On the main page issue, I'll leave it for now at having told you what the Wikicities policy is, and explained why. And we'll see how things go -- sannse (talk) 12:16, 27 February 2006 (UTC) :::::The main page is again editable, it is only protected against moves (I personally see no reason for the Main page to be moved anywhere). I hope this setup still adequately follows policy. Thank you for all your help! --Stux 17:27, 27 February 2006 (UTC) ::::::Thanks Stux, that's great -- sannse (talk) 12:11, 28 February 2006 (UTC)